Moon Women

Categories: Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction

Okay, last week’s entry was about a cool and formal book for readers who like to see how a writer thinks.

This week’s is for readers who like to plunge right into a sympathetic story about likeable characters.

Moon Women, by Pamela Duncan, is the story of three generations of Southern women learning to find peace with each other and with their changing lives. 

Middle-aged, divorced mill worker Ruth Ann Payne is going to pick up her daughter, nineteen-year-old Ashley, from a rehab center.  Ashley, always trouble, is now pregnant, too.  Meanwhile, Marvelle, Ruth Ann’s mother, who has begun to suffer from dementia, has wandered away from her other daughter’s house, determined to stay with Ruth Ann.  So Ruth Ann’s house becomes home for all three of them, and the delicate process of accommodating each other begins.

The narrative shifts among the three—Ashley, wary at coming home again and unsure what she wants to do about her baby’s father; Ruth Ann, tired of coping with her daughter and dreading her mother’s decline; and Marvelle, clearly in her last days but stubborn as ever after a long, hard life. 

The story also takes in Cassandra, Ruth Anna’s unmarried sister, who has never ventured to have a life beyond her immediate family.

The birth of Ashley’s baby, Marvelle’s death, the tentative blossoming of Cassandra, and Ruth Ann’s reaffirmation of her family’s importance (even the importance of her rather shiftless ex-husband)—that’s what happens.  But the book’s enormous appeal lies in its unpretentious, beautifully rendered Southern voice and its emotionally powerful depiction of the womens’ relationships.

As perfectly pitched and paced as the novel I wrote about last week, this first novel in the often-maligned category of “women’s fiction” is a lovely, moving book.